The Johns Hopkins Pediatric Palliative Care program provides consultation for the management of physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs of children with serious illnesses and their families. 

We provide this type of care through:

• Inpatient consultation - We work alongside your child’s existing inpatient team to provide expertise in symptom management, decision making, emotional support and conversations about hopes and goals.
• Outpatient clinic - Our integrative palliative medicine outpatient clinic is a hybrid of in person and telehealth appointments focused on facilitating long term, individualized medical care and planful decision making for children with serious illness in collaboration with the child’s primary team.  
• Collaboration with other teams - Collaboration with other teams - Our physicians and staff collaborate with primary and subspecialty teams to ensure that care is in alignment with patient and family goals, something that we call goal concordant care.  In addition to general palliative care inpatient and outpatient consultation, we have embedded clinicians in the Pediatric ICU, Neonatal ICU, and Outpatient Oncology.   

How We Can Help

Our goal is to promote and enhance the best possible quality of life for the child and family facing serious illness. We provide consultation for goals of care setting, pain and symptom control, emotional and spiritual support, advance care planning, and grief and bereavement support services.  

We assist patients from the prenatal period to young adulthood. Our interdisciplinary team provides an added layer of support to children and families as they pursue therapies or interventions for a variety of medical conditions, including treatments for cancer, progressive diseases, genetic conditions or any other very serious illness. We work with families even before birth, offering emotional and spiritual support, birth plans and sibling support.  

For families who expect to or have recently delivered an infant with a serious illness, our team can also assist with communication between the child’s other medical providers and the family, working toward a plan which accounts for the comprehensive needs of the child.